New version 4.1 is in the open beta testing phase now. Maybe see what the multi-player silliness they plan on introducing later into that will be. Aside from that they seem to have been working on improving the game but the user interface is still a lot of new things to learn by heart. Enjoy spending a lot of hours on that! I find it super confusing. It is a tycoon game first and foremost.

Sort of. It works, but don't expect to make a constant profit selling the same ware (like Silicon or Hull Parts) over and over.
The market will be saturated in no time, so if you are a "casual X3 player", your habits (of building 1000 universal traders) will work against you.
There are. :(
But of course!
Most notable (IMO) right now are:
1) Xenon are too weak and quickly go extinct even without player's involvement due to something being broken in OOS combat calculations, most probably;
2) resource collecting AI behavior of station managers is broken, vastly over-prioritizing one resource to the detriment to other resources of the same type (basically, if a station needs both Ore and Silicon, its manager will not send miners for Silicon until the station is full on Ore, and quickly switch everyone to Ore the very moment the station experiences Ore "shortage", even if it is 10 Ore short of full), which basically breaks mega-complexes. Workarounds are present, but they are not pretty.
Yes, they vary. Different stages of the game -- different bugs.
For the empire-building see above.
As for the personal control -- it is mostly solid. I mean, NPCs are ugly and unnatural, as usual, sometimes jumping on chairs or flickering (or vanishing upon the gate jump), but nothing game-breaking (like stuck controls).
Overall, I'd say yes, it is improving. Some design decisions are dubious, but stability has increased a lot. Now, the game does not crash upon exit on Linux (see complaint) and FPS do not drop to single digits in map mode. Everything is smoother.
I don't want to lie. From my perspective most of the "die-hard X3 fans" did not like the game (mostly because it is NOT X3 in any way or form: from ships' design, to gameplay meta). It would be better if you would not have any previous X3 experience at all.

Thanks Alm, Themken, I might go for it then if the bugs aren't game breaking now. I don't mind that it's not X3, a different game would be fine.

How essential would you guys say the DLC is? Play without then buy if I like it, or Collectors Edition is a must in order to enjoy?

The DLCs add more plots, more game starts and more sectors. I cannot see they are a must have when you are new to the game.
At least one of the complaints Alm88 had is being improved upon in the v4.1 according to the beta changelog.

Let me add one more: I think personal combat is less fun.

Alm's assesment is fair and correct. Improvements have been steady but there's still problems around.
The economy largely works and I'm often impressed by how influential you can be by boosting a faction's economy alone.
Micromanagement has improved with some QOL but is still wuite archaeic at its core, still, aside from some technical problems, an improvement over X3, in my oppinion.

As for the DLC: don't underestimate that they add new factions and ships, which for me was one of the more major lackings compared to X3.

Version 4.10 now with custom game starts and lots of QoL additions and bug fiXes and performance improvements and bug fiXes and some balancing.

When will the Linux installers be updated for 4.10?

I would love to know that as well but as I suspect there will be a hotfix incoming soon anyway I thought I would wait for that before reminding GOG, if they still have not given us it a day or two after it arrives. Of course we should still get this one within a reasonable time.

Resuming this thread, as the new bundle is tempting me.

Is X4 5.0 and all expansion a decent game?

I would have loved to call this game "any good".
There are SOOO many bugs.
I bought 2 miners. Mined ice. Suddenly there are no ice refineries in the game. And there was one just outside my station.
Gone, poef.

Sell a ship with your pilot in it? poof pilot gone.

You want to do ... basically anything? Well try the LEAST logical or intuitive way.
Preferably by using extra menu options in obscure places.

I have a million credits (or whatever) in stuff. But its illegal, and in the beginning of the game there is a quest line against pirates... so youre being set up.

Scanning data leaks... well ... it was an adventure. and completely illogical. since scanning ships is done actively but scanning modules isnt. and long range scans is also done actively.

Oh and lets not forget ... you cant hit anything, unless you turn on aim assist. And ive just been playing space sims for 20 years or so... so it must be inexperience. No in order to be able to hit anything you need aim assist.

So while this game has so much, and could have been one of the great space games out there, there is just so many wrong decisions, bugs etc. I do appreciate that egosoft is a small company... but man you should have tested this game using normal people, instead of the people you used.

So half the time this game is a joy to play, the other half you want to rip out your hair or beat up your computer for the sheer irritation and frustration this game produces.

EXTREME WARNING!!!

I just uninstalled the game and deleted my saves.
I had 6 (SIX) attempts at destroying a xen solar power plant.

EVERY TIME NO MATTER WHAT ORDERS YOU GIVE MY CAP SHIPS SUICIDE.
THEY EVEN DISOBEY DIRECT ORDERS JUST SO THEY CAN KILL THEMSELVES.

This is just one of the many inexplicable bugs of the game. ALL of which break the game.
I cant believe they rolled out this extremely flawed product. especially since this game could have been epic.
Thats why i hung on.
One of my cap ship captains had more than 4 stars. and it managed consistantly to get into range of enemy turrets.
so you order the cap ships to go to the "construxction" site. They overshoot their target... EXACTLY IN RANGE OF THE TURRETS.
Its really ingenious how egosoft made the ai: its not just bad, it is intentionally broken and completely mongoloid.
egosoft just REALLY wants to fuck you in the ass.

I think this is more venting than valid criticism.

Are there still problems? Sure.

• "OMG" so many click-menus without keyboard shortcuts
• Laughably bad widescreen/multi-monitor UI support
• OOS combat that hasn't improved since X3AP... at all... actually it may be worse
• Ranking up pilots or finding them reasonably ranked for less than 20 mil credits is still a pain
• Auto-trading with anything less than a 3-star pilot is worthless
• Station scanning "a la Rebirth" is still a nuisance to most (but at least it's become more fruitful)
• Sector Exploration is still ridiculous, with almost everything on the same plane but only spherical auto-explore options
• Xenon are underwhelming, except in Split space, where Split are overrun in just a handful of hours without babysitting
• Space stations are still effectively void of NPC life (strange if you're coming off a title like CP77)
• Station build camera control is still absolutely terrible
• Counterintuitive bail logic -- flying a small ship + no armor + minimal fire power = best bail chance
• Requires a ludicrous amount of satellites to get any real network coverage

And I could continue the list for -a long time- ...

AvatharBehemoth isn't wrong about capital ship ranges --
Though 5-star pilots make a significant difference (yes, even significant over 4-star)

Save times have slightly improved with v5, but are still terrible.
I hear they've made significant save/load improvements in the upcoming 6.00 release (April 12, 2023!)
We shall see.

But you know what? None of that has stopped me from thoroughly enjoying ~1000 hours of play time.
"The bones are there." It's a good game if you enjoy the genre.

Nothing's stopping you from opening a script editor and changing capital ship logic if it's literally making you want to uninstall the game... that's petty. Especially for a game of this scale from such a small team.

The EgoSoft forum is extremely active and their staff is timely and responsive -- perhaps not always developer-friendly, and certainly willing to tell you "it's that way on purpose". But they do listen, instead of blowing everyone off like most large titles.

And that leads to one of the most important notes -- there's a healthy modding community around X4, and honestly they've fixed almost every issue mentioned above (save for widescreen menu support) in one way or another if you're willing to roll a modded game.

I'm an X3 die hard, and I really miss full keyboard menu control. I miss being able to jump my entire fleet anywhere in the blink of an eye. I hate scanning stations. I liked that the stock market gave insights to real-time network-wide market data (even if it was easily exploitable).

X4 needs a better video card.
X4 needs a better CPU.
An SSD certainly doesn't hurt, but it's optional.

Missing those things and requiring higher system specs doesn't change that X4 is a far more immersive experience.
I'll always go back to X3TC/X3AP every few years for what those games offer.
But yeah, X4 is a "good game" now.

Nice! You're just the person I need to talk to.

I've been enjoying the crap outta X3, and 2 before it, the audiobook of Farnhams Legend and the other books after it. I'm really into the entire like, universe of it all.

1) Did I see that right, the universe did, kind of, get a restart / do-over with Rebirth? How relevant / accurate is all that "old" lore, still, in X4 now?

I've been able to play X3 only after incorporating the communitie's REALLY essential script packs. One of my favorite pasttimes was, setting up a capital ship with multiple wings of fighters, and having them patrol sectors that were important to my factories or allies. Here's where the scripts kicked in: Only with the community scripts, these capships had hireable hangar crew capable of maintaining their fighters, stocking up on replacement parts and ammo with shuttlecrafts they'd send when their own reserves went low, and they'd launch the wings automatically, keep track of what systems broke on each fighter that returned, and fix that back up without any intervention on my part. I LOVED it. Being able to call in my own capship's sister ship(s) for backup in big space battles where I could either command the battle from the bridge of my capship, or jump into my private fighter and get in the thick of it, watching the big nukes trail between the capships and sometimes stations before a bright flash brought massive devastation. It was epic. Always felt like that was such a sore spot for the game to be missing these functionalities, felt like an unfinished game / skeleton framework, that the community had to bring to life or make usable with these script packs. Where was I... right! So with that context,

2), is that possible in vanilla? If not, are these things still doable with community script packs?

And 3), how easy is it to get the Katana? It's one of my favorite ship designs and something I'd be happy with as a daily driver for a while. Does it have docking for fighters available in X4? The Katana was an M6 if I recall correctly, and never had any hangar or docking ports in previous games. I always wanted it to have at least docking for 1 small fighter to use it as sort of a small base ship.

Hm! Well, I'm a big sucker for the lore behind the universe (thanks to the amazing books they have). The games always felt... ambitious, but were constantly falling short by feeling just incomplete. Only the inclusion of script packs the community had to create, did it actually feel like a complete game. The visuals, like, designs, were another sore spot for a very long time. Having a look at the ship designs from X3 and forward, that's gotten sooooo much better at least.

I was big on X, until Rebirth. I just had a look at it, and thanks to flashbacks to Darkstar One, immediately ejected without even being able to give it a chance. I just couldn't. The designs though, everything visually, looked much better, so there's that at least I guess.

Then X4 came, and with 4 being 3+1 (somewhat acknowledging that Rebirth was no good), my interest was hooked again. Release reviews were talking about how shallow and buggy a lot of things were, and that a lot had changed compared to X3. I was on the fence, but had alternatives at the time, and decided to let it simmer a bit. The books tho, been very engaged with them still, all the while.

Yesterday, I caught wind of the new DLCs and all the patching that's been happening up til now, and now it does finally really pique my interest again. I'm starting to fall from my fence, towards getting it. Just gotta know if I need a script pack again =D

How's that work? All of their gates / systems are still not back online?

I see what you have done there and I fully support it. =D

The ship class rework is a welcome one, makes it a bit easier to keep track of sizes. But no more M for military, T for transporters, etc? That part was still kind of handy.

And, the scripting wasn't just required for the support side of things - without it, the entire game would just fall apart into micromanagement simulator 2000 if you actually dared to attempt to use its features to the full extend. That example was just the easiest to go for. If I have a big ship and a wing of small ships - am I gonna be babysitting each of these small ships in X4 like I was in vanilla X3? If so, then I'm worse off for having them over just having the biggest one ship I can get my hands on at all times, which quickly becomes just boring. I'd really like to be able to have and actually use a small fleet, feeling like a commander / captain, not having to be every deck hand on all of my ships at once.

What do you mean by that?

Ships like the, I think it was Argon Centaur of X2?
I was using that relatively early on as a base of operations, with two docking ports for small ships tucked away under its engines. Take the main ship somewhere, use the cargo for whatever I needed to stash, jump in the fighter when needed for missions, or to quickly jump over to a station nearby. It felt very like... Firefly Serenity vibes. With the Katana looking like a chibi Jupiter-Class Battlestar (Galactica), I've always loved it and wanted to be able to use that one like I used the Centaur back then. I'm not too big on Split designs in general, Paranid exterior design looks pretty nice from what I can see, tho.

What, didn't we clap them good enough in the past games...?
Especially with #deff and #deca being out of the picture, they still continued to be that big a menace? What for did we help #efaa then...? Shouldn't that have been more of an olive branch?